SOL Republic’s New Bluetooth Speaker Is as Loud as It Looks

The new Deck speaker. Photo by Tim Moynihan/WIRED

SOL Republic has made a good name for itself in the past few years by making stylish, affordable, and great-sounding headphones. It’s released college-themed interchangeable headbands aimed at the core demographic of 15- to 28-year-olds, and it’s even made a pair of headphones for cats.

The company’s latest product, announced today, is a portable Bluetooth speaker called the SOL Republic Deck. The $200 speaker is SOL Republic’s first non-headphone product, and its first collaboration with Motorola — the Deck launched alongside the new Moto X smartphone. The Deck’s physical design and feature set are clearly built to appeal to the younger crowd, just like SOL’s headphones.

The Deck begs for a direct comparison to Jawbone’s Jambox, still the best-known portable Bluetooth speaker out there, and priced just below $200. The Deck is bigger and flatter than the Jambox, and its speakers are meant to face vertically instead of horizontally. There’s a little bass port on the side of the speaker, facing left.

You’ll either love or hate the look of the speaker, especially the neon “lemon-lime” colored version I tested. The speaker has a bold visual personality — right down to the multi-colored, light-up SOL logo — that stands in opposition to the Jambox, which has a more understated look. The Deck is available in a few color schemes that are less in-your-face: “Gunmetal gray,” “Vivid red,” and “Electro blue.”

The “lemon-lime” color of the Deck evokes the bright yellow Sony Sports Walkman, while its size and shape are comparable to a PS Vita. On the back edge of the speaker are a power button, three inputs (3.5mm audio in, 3.5mm audio out, and a micro-USB charger port) and a switch that toggles between single-user mode, Bluetooth-pairing mode, and “Heist Mode” — it’s a device designed for social listening, but more on that later.

There are volume buttons on the top of the speaker, but they get visually lost in the chaotic grille that surrounds them. Front and center is a large SOL logo that lights up different colors (It’s disco time!). Above the logo is an NFC reader that quickens the pairing process for supported phones, and below the logo is a multifunction, Motorola-logo “M” button.

The new Deck speaker. Photo by Tim Moynihan/WIRED

Since the speaker was only just announced, the unit I received from SOL was not a set-in-stone final production example. The speaker I tested will likely not differ from what you can buy in stores, but I should mention that my listening impressions are based on the almost-final version. I’ll revisit the speaker when the final units ship, and I’ll use that to write a full review.

So having said that, the sound quality of the Deck left me with mixed feelings. On the plus side, audio sounds sharp and clean. Compared to the smaller Jawbone Jambox, the midrange and high-end of songs sound less muddy. In particular, I thought the Deck did a better job than the Jambox with lower-fidelity recordings, especially tunes with distorted or fuzzed-out guitars. Even the grungier parts of louder songs — Pixies’ “Vamos,” Neutral Milk Hotel’s “Holland 1945,” LCD Soundsystem’s “Movement” — sounded tight and well-defined on the Deck.

I was also very impressed with the fact that I didn’t hear any distortion at maximum volume. None. The Deck also gets a bit louder than the Jambox, and its speakers-facing-up design makes it a better option for settings where people are all over the place, not just in front of the speaker.

The speaker’s Bluetooth range was also superior when I tested it against the Jambox. SOL Republic claims the speaker has a Bluetooth range of 300 feet. Unfortunately, my apartment isn’t big enough to test that claim, but it did maintain a solid connection behind a closed door about 50 feet away, even while I covered up my phone completely. This is outside the range of the standard Bluetooth connection found on most of the speakers on the market, but the latest generation of speakers using the most recent iteration of Bluetooth, like the SOL Deck, can go farther than 200 feet. To note, when I tried the same closed-door test with the Jambox, the connection dropped out almost immediately.

So, the downsides. While the Deck maintains clarity at volume and keeps distortion at bay, it lacks warmth and depth. It’s not tinny, but it’s definitely more tuned to the mid-range and the high end. Even though audio stays crisp through its maximum volume level, it sounds more like a small speaker than the Jambox does.

All that high end detail means the Deck is lacking in low-end punch. The Jambox sounds deeper and more present, making it a better option for hip-hop and electronic music. You can improve the bass by holding the back of the Deck to a large window — using it as a makeshift resonating speaker — but your arm will tire quickly, along with the novelty.

The Deck has a few features that set it apart from other Bluetooth speakers. There’s a fun one called Heist Mode. You enable it by sliding a switch on the side of the speaker to an icon depicting a guy in a fedora standing in front of two hatless people. When Heist Mode is enabled, you can pair up to five devices to the Deck, and anyone can interrupt a song with a song of their own. You can stop these shenanigans by hitting the “M” button while a song is playing, which locks the connection to a single user. And that big glowing SOL logo — it changes color based on which device is currently controlling the jams.

The speaker is also daisy-chainable with other speakers (not just other Decks, either), thanks to its 3.5mm audio-out port. I hooked up the Deck to a Jambox, and it worked well. The Deck acted as a receiver, pumping audio out of itself and the Jambox in perfect sync.

Next to a Jambox. Photo by Tim Moynihan/WIRED

Like the Jambox, the Deck sometimes tells you what it’s doing when you press a button — except the Deck’s disembodied voice is a male’s rather than the Jambox’s female voice. For example, when you turn it on, it gives you a battery-life check (“Battery full”). When you set the side switch to pairing mode, it tells you when it’s ready (“Deck is ready to pair”).

Those audio cues are helpful, because the “M” button on the top of the Deck does different things depending on whatever mode it’s in. In single-user mode, holding it down shifts from an “Indoor” to an “Outdoor” equalizer preset. In indoor mode, the sound seems a bit more compressed, but slightly richer and more bass-heavy. In outdoor mode, the sound is louder and more expansive, but without any low-end oomph.

And if you want to field a few conference calls, the Deck doubles as a Bluetooth speaker phone. In single-user mode with no music playing, holding the “M” button activates Siri, Google Now, or whatever your particular phone’s assistant is named. Various tap combinations of the volume buttons and the “M” button also answer calls, hang up, mute calls, and decline incoming calls.

Overall, the SOL Republic Deck has a similar feature set to many of the other Bluetooth speakers out there, with a few extra goodies thrown in: Sound that blasts out in all directions, NFC pairing, far-reaching Bluetooth range, daisy-chaining capabilities, and the weird-but-sort-of-fun Heist Mode. It gets loud and sounds clean at high volumes, but its audio lacks depth; listening to it is like eating decent food that just needs a bit more seasoning. It’s a party-time accessory that, oddly, doesn’t get down and dirty with the bass-heavy music you’re likely to play at parties.